


Marginal Way

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you keep your eyes open after the war, you might just spot a couple of Freelancer survivors learning how to be human again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marginal Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starkraving](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/gifts).



> An [RvB Happy Hour](http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/rvb-happy-hour) fic for [Rae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving), who requested Maine and Carolina post-war surviving to eat hot dogs and drink beer and be relatively normal human beings. I didn’t manage beer in this one, but we got the hot dogs. Originally posted on tumblr.

There is no more Maine, not the way pre-space humans would remember. Oh, the state’s still there, technically, but it never really recovered from the flooding that ravaged its signature coastline in the late twenty-first century, and attempts to rebuild the once-prosperous tourist centers had little success.

Not that you care. You’ve probably never even seen Earth, and to you this little seaside village called Ogunquit provides a passable imitation of its namesake, separated by as many stars as centuries. No one who’d seen the real thing would be fooled, but the coast’s rocky enough and the main drag boasts a healthy string of souvenir shops (the fudge is pretty good) and seafood restaurants, and a footpath called the Marginal Way winds along the shoreline and joins the boardwalk before looping back into town.

Street, footpath and boardwalk alike are comfortably clustered with people today—not so much that a dedicated people-watcher like yourself can’t claim a bench and settle in. It’s a good day for it, not over-hot, some unobtrusive clouds to soften the beat of the sun.The air smells of salt water and hotdogs, gregarious native water birds squawk and flutter for scraps dropped on the walk and cobblestone. You take a bench not far from where the boardwalk opens onto a strip of rocky beach and settle in just in time to notice an improbably large man walking with an unnaturally red-haired woman who doesn’t quite reach his shoulder.

You can practically hear the boards groan beneath his feet. He’s big. Particularly big in this village, constructed in the style of low, sloping architecture people like to call “quaint.” His very presence seems to shrink the rooftops around him, like a grown-up walking through a child’s playhouse.

There’s a sense of discomfort in the way the giant moves, too, like he’s unused to his own skin. His plain white t-shirt strains to fit his massive chest. The redhead moves more easily, an aquamarine skirt swaying above her knees, but there is something off about her, too, though it takes longer to notice—an almost inhuman quickness in her steps. Not speed—she keeps pace with the lumbering giant at her side, but you can almost feel the restraint in her muscled calves as they pass, and you think she must be fast, when she wants to be. She is consciously slowing herself down, for him.

Don’t stare; you don’t want a man that size to catch you staring. Look away, but then you look at them again. It’s hard not to look at them.

But the big man doesn’t notice you. He doesn’t seem to notice anyone. True, other tourists give him a wide berth, and you’d do the same, but his head doesn’t so much as turn to watch them go by. His face is impassive at a distance, an impressive Slavic nose and bald head gleaming olive in the sun.

It’s only when they pass closer you can see his eyebrows go up and down, independent of one another, and the curious tilt of his wide flat mouth, and the angle of his head, and you notice the way she watches his face, then says something you cannot make out. Her free hand twists the end of her bright ponytail idly around her fingers; the other, you realize, is holding his enormous hand, so much bigger she more grasps his fingers. His dark eyes turn down to her and returns a thoughtful nod.

It’s in that moment, just as they pass in front of you and he turns, that you see his throat clearly above the crew-neck of his shirt, and have a quiet shock at the vicious gnarl of scar tissue twisted around several deep indents in his skin.

Look away quickly. Look back when they’ve passed you by several paces, crossing the busy promenade to the vendor carts that line up along the edge of the marina. In the space the crowd leaves around the two of them there is a little pool of solitude. You half expect to see her feet floating off the ground.

Food, though. For food, it seems, they’ll interact with the world, if only for a moment. The redhead approaches one of the carts and speaks to the vendor, whose eyebrows go up. The big man does not speak, but looks pleased with the massive pile of hot dogs assembled for them. He wolfs them down as they amble back in your general direction, taking each in what seems like a mere bite and a half, but it’s the redhead who startles you, stuffing them into her mouth at nearly the same clip.

They pass near you again on their way back shoreward, foregoing the boardwalk (and their shoes) for the rocky beach. He stoops to cuff his cargo pants, and her skirt ripples in the breeze as they clamber over the rocks where the water laps in lazily at mid-tide. With their eyes on the water, you watched them openly, and you see how lightly she steps, how she puts her hand to the small of his back, not for her own balance, but for his.

A wave washes over the big man’s feet and he looks surprised, then curious. The redhead laughs, not a delicate sound at all, an affectionate nasal laugh that cuts through the general din of the boardwalk to make it to your ears, and she splashes in over her ankles, taking his hand again. He tilts his big head and takes another step, a contemplative furrow in his brow, as though he’s never felt salt water on his skin before, or had forgotten what it felt like.


End file.
